mm I'll li PROFESSOR BIRT'S EDITION OV THE VERGILIAN CATALEPTON A LECTURE BY 11. ELLIS conri's PROFESson of i.aitv DELIVERED AT CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE ON FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 1910 LONDON HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, AMEN CORNER, E.G. OXFORD : 110 HIGH STREET 1910 Price One SliiUing net PROFESSOR BIRT'S EDITION OF THK VERGILIAN CATALEPTON A LECTURE BY R. ELLIS conri's pnoFEssou of laitn^ DELIVERED AT CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE ON FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 1910 LONDON HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, AMEN CORNER, E.C. OXFORD : lU! IIRill STREET . 1910 PROFESSOR BIRT'S EDITIOJ^ OF THE VERGILIAN CATALEPTON The last few years have been fruitful iu new editions and explanations of the minor works attributed to Vergil, now more commonly known as the Appendix Vergiliana. Besides the Oxford lecture of Professor Mackail elicited by my edition of 1907, and the interesting translations of some poems of the series known as Catalepton by the accomplished President of Magdalen, we have from Italy Sabbadini's monograph entitled Catalepton Priapea et Epigrammata, 1903, and from Germany two notable editions in the present year (1910), Professor Vollmer's complete text of the whole collection, Cidex Dirae Lydm Copa Moretum Cirls Priapea Catalepton Elegiae in Maecenatem Aetna, and Professor Birt's separate issue lugendverse luid Heimatpoesie VergUs Erlddrung des Catalepton. Both these important works are from the indefatigable press of B. G. Teubner. A few years before, Skutsch of Breslau had combated the prevailing view as to the authorship of the Ciris in two successive volumes, Aus Vergil's Frv.ltzeit (1901), Callus und Vergil (1906) ; while the Hungarian scholar, Geiza N^methy, has not only published a complete text and commentary on the Cirit<, but propounded new and daring views on two poems of the Catalepton (ix and xiii), the former of which he considers to be an early work of Ovid, the latter an epode of Horace accidentally omitted in the transmission. It is with the Catalepton only, indeed with a single poem of that series, that we have to do now. I have selected this short elegiac composition of sixty-four verses not for 334502 4 BIRT'S EDITION OF any special interest in its subject, the Praise of Messalla, still less from anything particularly attractive in its diction or metre, nor yet from any wish to disprove the improbable theory of Nemethy, that it is an early work of Ovid's, but as the longest and most complete piece of verse in the series of xv or xvi to which it belongs, and because this series has within the present year, as I mentioned above, received a new and very careful treatment in the editorial hands of Professor Birt of the University of Marburg. It is my hope that any scholar who hears or sees this lecture will find time and opportunity to read Birt's volume as a whole. It appears to me the clearest illustration I have 3"et met with of the present standpoint of German criti- cism as regards the constitution of classical, especially Latin, texts. In the GataIe2)ton, under which name are included three poems on Priapus and several short epigrams, one MS. of cent, xii stands out prominently as by far the best yet known. This MS. is the Bruxellcnsis 10675, 6. It is at Brussels and is usually cited as B. Arundel 133 (Ar.) in the British Museum of fifteenth century comes next, but at a long distance. One four-line epigram alone, which Ar. and the inferior class of MSS. all contain, is not to be found in the Bruxellcnsis. It follows xiii. 16, Talaslo, talasio, but I am not aware of any satisfactory explanation of this. Anyhow, we have reason to regret its a])sence from B, for the first verse of it is so desperately corrupted as to make any line of interpretation problematical. Birt, a friend and admirerof the much lamented Biicheler, has followed in editing the Catdepton the same strict rules as his master. That is to say, he gives an absolute pre- ponderance to the readings of B, and very generally neglects the inferior fifteenth-century MSS. altogether. It is not often, I believe, that a single codex has so indisputable a superiority, or that one can assert as incontestubly the uni(iue weight which should l)e given to its readings. The elegiac poem which I am examining, ix in Uk^ stM-i»>s of i'i(tah'i)to)i, though invoking at its outsi't tin- iusjtiration THE VEllGILIAN CATALEPTON -5 ol'thc Muses, is a slight, not to say poor, work, even if haiilly deserving the opproVjrioiis epithet which Professor Birt has given it, albcrne (' silly ' or ' foolish '). It is natural to com- pare it with the longer Panegyric of Messalla usually printed at the beginning of the fourth book of Tibullus, the 211 hexameters beginning Te Metmalla canarn ; quan- quam me ct cognita xdrluf^. This is also a slight, yet hartlly a poor, performance ; it flows on not unpleasingly from one topic of laudation to another, and is on the whole well sustained. At least nothing is to be found in it as weak as Quid de te possivi scriberey qiiidue tibi^ or as adulatory as : Ipsa haec, ipsa ferent rerum monumenta per orbem, Ipsa sibi egregium facta decus parient : nothing as obscure in composition or doubtful in structure as Si laudem asjyirare hiimilis si adire Cyrenas can be quoted from this longer Panegyric, which has also the merit of more learned references, and allusions to Greek legend or fable of a more interesting and recondite type. What member of the house of Messalla is described in our Elegiac encomium Professor Birt leaves undecided, but ends with acquiescing in the prevailing view that it was the great orator and general M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus, the patron and friend of Tibullus. It is true we might expect to find more distinct reference in the poem to the oratorical gifts of Corvinus ; but this may readily be explained by the poet's desire to dwell at length (1) on the warlike achieve- ments of his hero, (2) on his skill as a composer of Greek verses. I have already mentioned the theory of the Hungarian Geiza Ndmethy, ascribing ix to no less a writer than Ovid, and identifying the Messalla described in it with Messalinus the elder son of Corvinus. This theory, which is more ingenious than plausible, seems to me impossible. Could any Messalla of that period of Roman history, any of the Messallas except Corvinus, have been addressed as uictor qua terrae, quaque patent marial 6 BIRT'S EDITION OF I say nothing of the creeping style of ix, quite at vari- ance with all we know of Ovid, and particularly with what the elder Seneca singles out as his special character- istic, his exuberance. My present purpose, however, is a defined one ; I aim to show in a marked instance the progress of criticism in Latin poetry from the point of view not of grammar, nor except incidentally of metric, but of Palaeography. The founda- tions of this inquiry are due to Sillig, whose researches into the MSS. of the Appendix Vergiliana covered a wide ground, and may still be read with profit in the last volume of Wagner's reprint of Heyne's Vergil. Sillig was succeeded by Ribbeck and H. A. J. ]\[unro, who collated the Cambridge MS. of Gulex for Ribbeek's edition, and of Aetna (in the same codex) for his own edition of the latter poem. After these came Bahrens, an inde- fatigable collator of MSS., but so wild in his conjectural restorations of corrupt passages as greatly to impair the effect of his otherwise valuable labours. Biihrens' edition, which includes Aetna, forms the second volume of his Poetae Latini Minores. My own edition, projected as far back as 1876, did not appear till 1907. The edition of Curcio is dated 1908, and is still unfinished : that of Vollmer forms the second volume of his new issue of Bahrens. This rapid summary of the men who have placed succes- sively the MS. question in a clear light gives a peculiar interest to Professor Birt's Catalepton. It may be said, indeed, that this is a small part and by no means the most interesting of the Oi^uscula Vergiliana, yet, small as it is, it contains what for most lovers of Vergil is the first of all requisites, the poems which bear upon tlic life of the great poet himself. Birt, as Vollmer somewhat earlier, accepts this small series of miniature poems (ra Kara Xiirrou), including three sets of verses in honour of the god Priapus with otlier slight epiyrainmata, as genuine works of Vergil's youth, put together, after the poet's demise, by the two editors of tlie Aeneid, Varius and Tucca, perhaps nuiinly by the THE VERGILIAN CATALEPTON 7 former of the two, Varius. To both, or to Varius alone, the hist poem of the series — Vate Syracosio qui dulcior, Hesiodoque Maior, Homereo non minor ore fuit, Illius haec quoqiie sunt diuini elcmenta poctae Et leuis in uario carmine Calliope, may fairly be attributed. It forms a fitting epilogue to the collection, and states unmistakably that the Catalepta which precede it are the juvenile effusions of the poet who outdid Theocritus in his Eclogues, Hesiod in his Georgics, Homer in his Aeneid. No such categoric statement exists in the case of the other opuscula attributed to Vergil, and Birt is certainly right in emphasizing this fact, and noting it as an argument for the genuineness of the whole Catalepton. Yet such an admission, coming as it does from the home of sceptical criticism, Germany, must be considered almost phenomenal, especially if contrasted with Skutsch's daring theories in a quite opposite direction. Birt himself makes one exception to his acceptance of all the Catalepta as Vergil's. It is the one I have translated for this lecture, ix. He considers both the metre and the diction of ix alien to the style of Vergil, in particular the numerous trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic endings of the pentameters, the frequent elisions in the latter half of the pentameters fulmine et imhre louem, Jiumina adire Tagi, carmine adlre sale6, the spondaizon navique, fatehor enim, quae maxima deterrendi, and the inordinate fondness for repe- titions of the same word. To these arguments, I think, no very great weight can be attached. The poem is, if by Vergil, the work of Vergil in his youth, when his style was still unformed, and while he was still getting his hand in. Haw it should have found a place in the other dementa or youthful productions of Vergil is a still unsolved problem. But the fact of the Clrif being also addressed to a Messalla may suggest an explanation. It does not greatly matter whether the Messalla who is there called iuueninn doctissime is the orator Curvinus himself 8 BIRT'S EDITION OF or a son or possibly some other member of the family. If the Ciris was popularly ascribed to Vergil at the time when Varius and Tucea put together and edited the Catalepton, that would be a reason for including in the list of short pieces which made up the Catalepton another poem of which a Messalla was the hero. As a preliminary to such remarks or criticisms as Birt's edition and commentary suggest, I have thought it worth while to append a prose ti'anslation, in which the views of the new editor are studiously followed, except in one or two cases where I could not agree. Translation of Catalept. IX. Pauca mihi, niueo sed non incognita Phoebo. Some few words of song, but those not unrecognized by glistening Phoebus, a few words dictate, ye learned Muses, unto me. A conqueror is come, the splendid glory as ye may see of a triumph as splendid, a con(|ueror through the length and breadth of land and seas. And with him he bears rough tokens of a barbaric conflict, comj^arable with heroic Diomede or haughty Eryx, yet none the less for that supreme in calling to light your songs, and deserving himself to set foot in the poet's holy companies. This then is the reason, O best of men, why I fret beyond my wont with strange anxieties, pondering where to find something I may write to you, something I may write about you. For, let me not deny it, that which should have been the chief est reason to frighten me from the task, has proved the chief incitement to urge me on. 12-22. Some few lines of yours, Messalla, have found tlu'ir way into my pages, lines that have the wit, no less than the language of Cecropia, lines that deserve to be greeted by centuries still in the future and to outlive the old sages of l^hrygia and Pylos. In tliese the sheplierds Moeris and Melibocus took their ease beneath the leaf}' covert of a spreading oak, interchanging melodious verses THE VERGILIAN CATALEPTON 9 in alternating response, like those which the youthful poet of Sicily loves. Gods all and goddesses contended with each other to deck the hero-woman, each with their several adornment. 23-38. O happiest of all maidens she that had thee to sing her praise. No other shall ever boast to surpass her in glory — not she who, if only she had not been se- duced by the Hesperides' gift, had surely outran fleet Hippomenes ; not she that was born from a swan's egg, Helen the Fair ; not Cassiepia glittering in the highest heaven ; not the woman {inulier for mult am) that kept her suitors long at bay by a chariot race, she whom each gift- laden hand was fain to secure as a bride, in whose behalf her wicked father many a time drained his son-in-law's life-blood, and many a time the grass streamed with gore that dj'ed it to a sanguine hue — no, not queenly Semele, nor Argive Acrisione, looking that Jove should descend upon her in a storm of lightning or in rain, nor yet she for ravishing whom the Tarquins, son and sire, left the house- hold gods of their fathers for exile, in the day when Rome first changed the domination of tyrants for the consuls' milder rule. 39-54. Many and well-deserved as many are the splendid rewards that Rome has given to her foster-sons the Measallae, the champions of the people. Why indeed should I recount those tasks of extraordinary effort ? Those rough seasons of severe campaigning ? How he disdained the Forum, the Rostra, the City of Rome it- self, and chose rather to live in a camp, so far removed from his son here and from this his native land. How he endured seasons now of immoderate cold, now of excessive heat, or again could make his bed on the hard flint-stone. How in face of foul weather he would often navicjate the racrinsi Euxine, often force the sea, often the storm to yield to his enterprise : often, again, tlung his body upon a dense mass 10 BIRT'S EDITION OF of foemen with no thought of war's hazard that threatens all alike. How by turns he inarched upon the nimble-bodied Africans, those swarming multitudes of a perjured race, now to rushing Tagus' golden streams ; how in pursuit of battle he sought out one people after another, and cai-tied his victories beyond the bourne of oceans. 55-64. Not for me, not, I say, for me is it to deal with achieve- ments such as these. Nay, I would even venture to declare, it is scarcely for mortal man to do so. By themselves alone shall these great acts convey their historic record through the world, shall themselves beget an unsurpassable glory. My part it shall be, to blazon those poems which the high gods Apollo with his Muse, Bacchus with his Aglaia, have combined with yourself to frame. If, lowly as I am, I yet am competent to commend your verse, if I may approximate the poetry of Gyrene, approach the wit of Greece with a song of Rome, thenceforward my success is even beyond all to wliich I aspire. This contents me ; with the stolid rabble I have nothing to do. Remarks and Criticisms. In vv. 5, 7 we have clear imitation of Catullus Ixvi. 7 'Dulcia nocturnae portans uestigia rixae'. Insignia, ' tokens,' might be scars which the chances of a war with barbaric tribes had left on the body of Messalla. This seems pointed to by Ilorrida, in obvious antithesis to Catullus' Dulcia. 15, IG. Carmina, quae Pliiygium, sacclis acccpta futuria, Carmina, quae Pyliuni uincero digiui sencni. So both Birt and Volhner, and so my t)wn edition 1907. But there is some tloubt as to tlio reading. B omits verse 15 in. pr. and only adds it in thi- niurgin, with jwciu for piliLiin or pyiiam of Ar. and ]\I. In the same verse, for THE VEllGILIAN CATALEPTON 11 quae B has ]a'u\cd tlie word (juite ditiercntly of the heavy and unskilful driving of the long scries of defeated suitors.^ I confess to a doubt as to either explanation of grauidae Quanus, and would put in a claim ' Stultum cortamon chjiuhuiu Oiiliihaiit i^rauiilao iiuid sibi quaimiii.' iiuinus? (liiicliokT). THE VERGILIAN CATALEFfON 13 not only for the Aldinc correction Graiae, but for ToUius' ingenious nurum in place of vianus. The verse, if I mistake not, is a slightly varied form of what is said in the Ciris (412) of Scylla : Certatim ex omni petiit quam Graecia regno. In both passages some mention of Greece, as the land whence Hippodamia's suitors came, is required to give the proper clearness and effect. Graiiklus and grauis ((jraiui^) appear to be interchanged in Stat. Silv. v. 3. 127 : nurus and manus are similarly confused in the Dijon MS. of lb/a 178 ' turba cruenta msiinus nurus.' On this view, and supposing the poet to have written Optabant Graiae quam sibi quaeque nurum ^, we have a description of Hippodamia as the bride whom every Greek mother desired to see wedded to her son. The passage ends with a verse which is not yet settled : Saepe rubro similis sanguine fluxit humus. Here similis of MSS. was early altered to Eleis, whicli all the recent editors have rightly rejected. I do not feel sure that similis is not right, ' The ground often flowed with red gore, transformed into its hue.' Cf. Dryden's 'And the green grass was dyed to sanguine hue.' But if any change is required, my conjecture ruhrae similis, 'as if it were red,' is the easiest that can be offered. 34. Birt's reading Inmitti exspectans fulmine et imbre louem for Inmiti exspectat of B is probable enough, but not certain. Inmitti, indeed, is a great improvement upon Inmiti, but exspectans for exspectat or exspectant would be a rare and rather solecistic case of a singular word as a plural, where the sense particularly calls for a plural. * Non Semele, non Danae, exspectantes inmitti louem (ilia) fulmina, (haec) imbre.' Yet the distribution of the ablatives ' Toll ins quoted Atn.xi. 581 ' Multac illam frustraTyrrhona per oppida niativs Optaverc iiuruin ', wliicli agrees remarkably with ' Optabaut Graiae quam sibi quaeque nurum '. 14 BIRT'S EDITION OF fulmine, ivihre, the former referring to Semele alone, the latter to Danae alone, is perhaps a sufficient excuse for the singular exspectans. Whereas any such change of con- struction as exspectant or exs2')ectat for the participle which prevails in the other clauses, ' Non edita Tyndaris — Non fulgens Cassiepia — Non defensa,' is very unpleasing and forms a harsh break in the regular sequence. 43-44. Castra foro rostris, urbi praeponere castra, Tam procul hoc gnato, tarn procul hac patria ? rostris is one of Birt's happiest corrections. B gives the V. thus : Castra foro castra urbi praeponere castra. In 44 the case is less clear. B gives it thus : lam procul hoc gnato, tam procul hac patria, and both Birt and Vollmer agree in retaining hoc gnato, hac 2^atria. It may perhaps be urged in favour of my haec . . . haec that it accords with the fondness for repetition of the same word which marks the poem throughout. 51. Nunc celeris Afros fperiurac miha gentis. It is much to be regretted that B here gives an un- certain sound. When I examined the passage in Brussels I recorded pniri§ as the reading of B ; the Arundelianus (Ar.) has periuria. The right word would seem to be either jse^'iurae or as I rather incline to believe 2')eriuria. An adjective periurius seems to have existed if we may trust the MSS. of Statins' S'llvae iii. 3. 179 hand aliter gemuit jjerhiria Theseus Litora, ' the perjured shore,' where he had promised Acgeus what he did not fulfil ; so here the Africans are called a perjured swarin, in allusion to their insincere and untrustworthy character. Any one who has studied the Brussels MS. of Cataleplon will feel with me that B's original pernirif points to an adj. in -ius ratlier than -v.s. Is it not possible that Ar. has here preserved the true reading and the right word ? As regards formation we have an exact parallel in the adj. iniurius. THE VER(;ILIAN CATALEPTON 15 It is in the finale of the poem that I difTer most from Prof. Birt, though in the transhition I have not deviated from expressing his views as clearly as I could. This finale is in eight verses (57-64) : — Ipsa haec, ipsa ferent rerum monumenta per orbem, Ipsa sibi egregium facta decus parient. Nos ea quae tecum finxerunt carmina diui Cynthius et Musa, Bacchus et Aglaie, Si laudem aspirare humilis, si adire Cyrenas, Si patrio Graios carmine adire sales, Possumus, optatis plus iam procedimus ipsis. Hoc satis est, pingui nil mihi cum populo. I propose to translate thus : ' Of their own unaided greatness, their own simple selves, these acts shall be borne by history through the world, of themselves shall beget their own exceeding glory. As for me, — to come to the poems M'hich the gods have helped you, Messalla, to frame, if I am permitted to waft upon them some slight degree of praise, if I may approach Gyrene's unexalted style, approach Greek wit with a Latin song, my success is already beyond my very desires. I am content; with the stolid rabble I have nothing to do.' 57, 58. A question. Is ipsa haec in 57 nominative or accusative ? Birt makes it nom., ' ipsa haec, ipsa facta rerum monumenta ferent per orbem et sibi egregium decus parient '. If this is so, the greatness of Messalla's achievements would be sufficient without any blazoning on the part of poets or panegyrists to make a historic name in the world. It is not to be denied that there is a neatness in thus making the ipsa of 57 correspond as a nom. with ipt08sihiUty that the neuter plural a of hlanda w^as in this passage exceptionally allowed to be scanned as long, reserving to ourselves the right to doubt wdiether something quite different, e. g. At puto non hlanda est, or At puto non hlande (Ehwald), may not have existed in much older MSS. of the Amoves, now unfortunately lost. If the Bruxellensis of the Catalepton is removed by two or three centuries from the Arundelianus and other fifteenth century MSS., its own distance from any one of the earliest MSS. of Vergil is incomparably greater. Incomparably, because its distance is not purely one of time, but of culture and civilization. The darkness of the early middle age has supplanted the civilization of the Roman Empire. One suggestion I have yet to offer. In 61 humilis is explained by Birt as referring to the poet, whose humility contents itself with a modest wush to commend his friend to the notice of the world in verses which may bear com- parison with Cyrene. This makes an awkward break in the rhythm ; may not kumilis refer to Cyrenas, in allusion to the avoidance by Callimachus and Eratosthenes (both Cyrenaeans) of anything magniloquent or bombastic in their poetry 1 Propertius speaks of non inflati somnia CallimacJii. The translator of Messalla's verses might fitly describe himself similarly. oxford: HORACE HART PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY i ( •-ay lonl Uros. Makers 1 s vnicuse, N. \-. PAI JAN. 21 1^08 IJ C BFRKFLFYLIBRARIFS CDS^fl^DfiTS IjLLu UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY